the outside course I never took
I had a very interesting discussion today with a guy who believes in the ubiquity of trees and who challenged me to read more philosophy of science; specifically, Paul Feyerabend. I've only ever dabbled in philosophy of science since I changed my mind about doing it as my third subject in first year at uni. (Instead I did linguistics, and look where it got me.) Philosophy of science intrigues me, but when it gets irrational, I get annoyed, and give up.
The point of saying all this is to distance myself from one possible interpretation of what I said in my last post ... magic ... It didn't strike me as worth noting yesterday, but since then, I've dipped into Feyerabend, and in the light of his irrationalism, it is worth saying today! Science and magic are different things ... I do believe we have made advances in knowledge since ancient times - I do believe it is possible to know things and be sure of their truth and factuality - I do believe there is objective reality (reality is not a social construct!)
I'll defend any of those claims if anyone is interested in challenging them, but in the meantime, I still like the quote from Firth, because obviously, neither a single human nor any collection of humans will ever know everything there is to be known ... in comparison with what there is to be known, we hardly know anything; in comparison with what used to be known, we know a lot, and we're learning more, and it's interesting, worthwhile, and objective.
None of that is very original, of course.
(Ps - The article titled The Ubiquity of Trees is available here)
The point of saying all this is to distance myself from one possible interpretation of what I said in my last post ... magic ... It didn't strike me as worth noting yesterday, but since then, I've dipped into Feyerabend, and in the light of his irrationalism, it is worth saying today! Science and magic are different things ... I do believe we have made advances in knowledge since ancient times - I do believe it is possible to know things and be sure of their truth and factuality - I do believe there is objective reality (reality is not a social construct!)
I'll defend any of those claims if anyone is interested in challenging them, but in the meantime, I still like the quote from Firth, because obviously, neither a single human nor any collection of humans will ever know everything there is to be known ... in comparison with what there is to be known, we hardly know anything; in comparison with what used to be known, we know a lot, and we're learning more, and it's interesting, worthwhile, and objective.
None of that is very original, of course.
"Let there be no mistake: I am not proposing that we teach only what can be ascertained as true. On the contrary, we must doubt our learning, and we must continue teaching that we are all ignorant in most respects and to some degree or other. But we must also teach that ignorance can be gradually overcome by rigorous research, that falsity can be detected, that partial truth can be attained and perfected ..." M Bunge (1996), 'In praise of intolerance to charlatanism in academia.' p108
(Ps - The article titled The Ubiquity of Trees is available here)
posted by cath at
10:28 pm
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